No, GPS will not work through six feet of soil. However, this is an A-GPS device, meaning it will work where standalone GPS won't (inside residential construction, thick forest cover).
What the device can do to help find a child who's under 6ft of soil/in a well is pretty neat, though: It can be preprogrammed to send a location at regular intervals, either constantly or on a triggering event (like when it gets 250 yards from the school's lat/lon). So checking the location history via the secure web app, you can see where the breadcrumb trail ends.
Disclosure: I worked on this product's server infrastructure some time ago, but am no longer affiliated with the organization.
Thanks...Noise canceling headsets don't work for that variety of sound. I have found that earplugs (like those used in industrial settings) work very well. Of course, earplugs or noise-canceling headphones make it more difficult to carry on a conversation with your wife during dinner...
If I could do something to make loud subwoofers on the street inaudible from my house, I'd pay probably $15K to install it on my property. Should operate on the same principle, though I imagine the wavelength could be a problem due to the targeted frequency band.
The problem with that argument is that what we have is not a free market. It's series of cartels.
True. And these cartels lobby the government to maintain a regulatory environment which, while ostensibly exists to protect the consumer, actually protects the existing large corporations which can afford huge teams of lawyers to show they're "compliant", effectively preventing competition.
New industries might start out competitive but once they get to a certain size, they start bending the rules in their own favor. Using unfair practices to freeze out competition, getting sweetheart legislation pushed through Congress, buying influence.
I could not agree more!
You free market preachers are just naive. The only free markets are also fair markets. And if you think what we have today is a fair market, you need to pass the bong. Government is the only entity that has the ability to groom a competitive marketplace. What we have today is what happens when government stops doing that job for 10 years. The rich get richer and there's no accountability for cheating. Economic collapse follows right after.
Ummmmm....help me out. How is it that you can accurately identify the situation we have where corporations are running the game in washington, using government influence to protect themselves from competition, and yet not see that this is Government interference in a free market, funded by cartels? This is not a free market, this is Government regulation preventing the free market.
Inefficient government programs are the truism, not necessarily the reality. With some notable and widely publicized exceptions. But the fact you ignore is that without government, without a referee to control the game, our economic system has a very short lifespan. And yet you keep on with 30 year old economic theory in the face of economic meltdown while your 401K loses 65%. I don't think I want advice on government or managing markets from you.
Ok, the 30 year old theory is probably actually 60 year theory, known as "Keynesianism", which has been embraced by big-government types on both sides of the aisle in DC, because it allows for a central bank to be used to bankroll government involvement in the economy. It's crap, and it needs to be replaced with a system that prevents government intrusions (like you describe above). That system is gold-backed money [which prevents printing dollars and growing government], with the elimination of fractional reserve banking [which exacerbates the business cycle, creating boom-bust swings].
True. Also, I'm sure there was a lot of debate for them to decide whether to add that stuff and push the price over $100. I would expect, if they get enough interest, they will offer such an item next year (1GB RAM, 2-3 USB, maybe wifi), and could do it for the same price.
The difference with this thing is that it's got an easy to use dev kit based on a popular Linux distro, not some goofy one-off that doesn't have the packages you want (i.e. LAMP, media server, SAMBA, CUPS, etc.).
I'm not an MS fanboy... but using MS dev tools, writing software to work on MS operating systems, and with a user audience where MS software has a nearly-100% market share by choice... is my day job.
Right...so you don't need to know about anything else, even if there are reasonable alternatives.
As such, I don't have the luxury of time either in or out of my regular work hours to explore other things. I'm busy enough keeping up with current trends on the.NET Framework, which is exactly what the folks who fund my living want and need me to do.
A valid point, and perhaps a trap?
End of story.
Also, a dead end to your career. Trying something totally new is hard and painful, but opens a lot more doors. Adult life doesn't offer us the time we had to "tinker" like when we were kids, but missing it means you become a (Linux|MS|Java|Perl|PHP) zombie. Better to force yourself to learn something totally new, than to become older and unemployable at any interesting job, because "it was too much work" to try something new.
I price shop for cheap laptop batteries. I guess I am partially responsible for encouraging low-quality manufacturing. Really, I think I know that I might get a substandard product. It would be hypocritical for me to point the finger at Chinese manufacturers who are more or less giving me what I want.
I'll remind my wife to try to keep her laptop's airflow ports unobstructed...
We don't need it. The bill of rights already protects our personal rights and limits the federal government's powers over the states and the citizens.
Oh, wait, the Constitution is routinely ignored by the Federal Government. So I'm sure a non-binding technology bill of rights will have a huge impact on limiting the Federal Government's actions...
Hmmm. In PA, teachers often have to sun for several years before getting a shot at a full time job in a decent district. Of course there are the NON-decent districts.
Also in PA, doctors are leaving in droves or retiring because of a disastrous malpractice insurance system...
...but, there is still a pretty healthy demand for IT workers. Nurses are in big, big demand (like HTML monkeys ca. 1998).
Also consider the cost of test systems! Oh, how I bemoan the lack of test systems when license fees prevent me from having a production-like system.
I never anticipated the death-by-a-thousand-papercuts mode of inoperation I would experience when moving from a linux to an MS shop. Really, you can't even legally run the OS on a VM without appropriate licensing. When you run commercial/proprietary, you run costly.
Am I the only person in the world who's more concerned about the 4,000 gallons of water that can be poisoned by a CFL in a landfill than I am about a possible slight improvement in carbon output?
Parent makes good points. In addition, along these lines, advanced degrees could differentiate you by allowing you the OPPORTUNITY to get an interesting and challenging job in research/development/applied research, and be a key contributing member of a technology company, with opportunity for advancement to director level positions and higher.
However, if you go for the advanced degree route, be prepared to compete with the best people in the world in your specialty, and understand that if you can't come up with original, meaningful, material work, you'll have your bozo bit flipped and be let go rather quickly.
Alternatively, learn the engineering side of things (quality assurance, project leadership, etc.), and with a bachelor's or less, you can make decent money and be in demand as a senior engineer/line manager.
I briefly majored in education in college and my wife is a school psychologist. Many of my friends are teachers.
Basically, the educator curriculum in teaching colleges is designed around a ton of busywork related to pedagogy and doctrine; it is difficult for a creative person to put up with it. A few do, and graduate, and try really hard for a few years.
Inevitably in all but the best schools a passionate young teacher comes up against political battles (things like trying to fail a student who didn't try/show up/hand in any work) and/or the soul-crushing problem of managing a classroom with just one or two uncivilized savages whose parents are crack-addicted and incarcerated, and the overwhelming frustration of trying to teach 14 or 19 or 24 good kids with one or two real problem students overwhelms them. In what can be described as "working class" neighborhoods, there are a lot of 'parents' who don't get their kids to school, despite ridiculous levels of support, encouragement, special treatment, social workers, etc...
Paying more won't help. The teachers (probably about half to 2/3) eventually tune out or quit. Bless those saints who stay strong year after year.
The thing is, pay increases don't help. As John Taylor Gatto noted, the system is designed to destroy the family. Well it's succeeded at that, and now there is nothing to be done in some of these classrooms, no matter how good or devoted the teacher.
What it is coming down to, even for many of the selfless people in the helping professions, is an emerging clarity that giving something of enormous value (education) to people who refuse to participate, is a pointless, desperate, and demoralizing exercise.
Disagree. I could run Ubuntu 8.10 and XP equally well on my old Pentium II 400MHz/512Mb laptop. Gnome without effects is about as responsive as XP without desktop effects.
You're partially correct.
Telecom providers make money by investing in capital equipment (the fiber, copper, routers, switches, etc.), then extracting revenue from that equipment over the long term.
This is fine, and purely capitalist.
The anti-capitalist part is when they lobby for laws preventing others from entering the marketplace, or lobby for special privileges for domain rights, etc., and shoulder out of the way the smaller operator who can't lobby/legislate as well. The government involvement is the part that makes it anti-capitalist (including Intellectual Property law).
Ok, my comment needed more context, and your point is valid. In some situations a relatively inexperienced first-timer can be made a scapegoat. Someone used to doing only technical work, early in a career, may be seeing things in black and white. Thus, once you're a day late and a dollar over, you need to be prepared to deal with the political consequences.
I've worked with good PMs who still were late or over budget most of the time. I think the statistic that 80% of all software projects are at least 100% over budget or time is still true. That means my original assertion that "most" fail compared to the original charter is basically true (if a bit blunt).
Jawn is right, but remember that You Will Fail. Accept that. Experienced project managers fail most of the time. When I say fail, I mean you will be late and over budget. "Managing" expectations is what the learning experience is about your first time around. Good luck.
Yes, the New Deal made the Great Depression a little worse, but it also kept people from dying of hunger or maybe only losing every bit of wealth and happiness they had been building up in their life.
Actually, FDR had wheat plowed under rather than harvested even while people starved in the street, just to keep up the prices to support the farming industry which was overproducing.
Read history before blaming the free market. All of this has been allowed to happen because of the central banks, which are basically the government's cash machine. And now the same thing that caused the problem (interventionist policy) is being touted as the cure, by Democrats and Republicans...
Sun has a great line of recurring business selling hardware and support to telecom companies (AT&T, T-MO). Not game-changing, but I'm sure this is not the only niche market where Sun is still beating Linux.
In my geographical region (Philadelphia PA, USA) degreed nurses make as much as degreed senior developers (more when they work overtime).
Teachers make almost as much as mid-level web developers depending on experience, and have 3 months off per year, and almost perfect job security (you literally have to get caught having sex with a student to get fired).
Both jobs have crappy aspects, too -- I'm not dinging them, just pointing out that the pay is reasonable.
I disagree. I see this a lot. It is true of many bright (not exceptional) engineers I've worked with that get these kinds of comments, that they distinguish themselves with PERSEVERANCE. I've noticed that even many engineers in their 40s and 50s are losing this trait. Banging your head on the wall and feeling the hurt until you get the answer is hard, and it sucks when others write it off as "being so smart".
1) When the pending performance issue can be solved for the next year's worth of growth with an affordable amount of hardware, buy hardware.
2) If the system is only deployed in one place (not a problem multiplied across 10s, 100s, or 1000s of sites)
3) When the hardware to be purchased is NOT expensive legacy hardware that makes it more expensive to fix the right way later (or makes finance think you don't know what you're doing saying you can replace a $1M AIX machine w/ $40K in commodity hardware, leaving them with a huge capital cost to depreciate).
4) When the marginal cost of hardware is less than the marginal cost of hiring a new programmer. This is true for most Sun machines and all x86.
I've been in the opposite of each of the above scenarios, when we used programming talent to solve the problems because the criteria above were actually the opposite.
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No, GPS will not work through six feet of soil. However, this is an A-GPS device, meaning it will work where standalone GPS won't (inside residential construction, thick forest cover). What the device can do to help find a child who's under 6ft of soil/in a well is pretty neat, though: It can be preprogrammed to send a location at regular intervals, either constantly or on a triggering event (like when it gets 250 yards from the school's lat/lon). So checking the location history via the secure web app, you can see where the breadcrumb trail ends. Disclosure: I worked on this product's server infrastructure some time ago, but am no longer affiliated with the organization.
Thanks...Noise canceling headsets don't work for that variety of sound. I have found that earplugs (like those used in industrial settings) work very well. Of course, earplugs or noise-canceling headphones make it more difficult to carry on a conversation with your wife during dinner...
If I could do something to make loud subwoofers on the street inaudible from my house, I'd pay probably $15K to install it on my property. Should operate on the same principle, though I imagine the wavelength could be a problem due to the targeted frequency band.
The Users' Home is the place of the Linux Desktop and Ubuntu is the most notable distro behind the movement, but they're not going to do it alone.
Which is why my mother, mother-in-law, and (soon) father-in-law, who are all tech neophytes, use Ubuntu, which I installed on their PCs quite simply.
My dad, being a power-user and longtime tech-head, can handle using Windows, and fiddling with his graphics drivers.
This whole "K" thing has gone on too far. Sounds like a "K" iddie Mar"K"eting effort, and undermines everything they do.
Like iApple?
The problem with that argument is that what we have is not a free market. It's series of cartels.
True. And these cartels lobby the government to maintain a regulatory environment which, while ostensibly exists to protect the consumer, actually protects the existing large corporations which can afford huge teams of lawyers to show they're "compliant", effectively preventing competition.
New industries might start out competitive but once they get to a certain size, they start bending the rules in their own favor. Using unfair practices to freeze out competition, getting sweetheart legislation pushed through Congress, buying influence.
I could not agree more!
You free market preachers are just naive. The only free markets are also fair markets. And if you think what we have today is a fair market, you need to pass the bong. Government is the only entity that has the ability to groom a competitive marketplace. What we have today is what happens when government stops doing that job for 10 years. The rich get richer and there's no accountability for cheating. Economic collapse follows right after.
Ummmmm....help me out. How is it that you can accurately identify the situation we have where corporations are running the game in washington, using government influence to protect themselves from competition, and yet not see that this is Government interference in a free market, funded by cartels? This is not a free market, this is Government regulation preventing the free market.
Inefficient government programs are the truism, not necessarily the reality. With some notable and widely publicized exceptions. But the fact you ignore is that without government, without a referee to control the game, our economic system has a very short lifespan. And yet you keep on with 30 year old economic theory in the face of economic meltdown while your 401K loses 65%. I don't think I want advice on government or managing markets from you.
Ok, the 30 year old theory is probably actually 60 year theory, known as "Keynesianism", which has been embraced by big-government types on both sides of the aisle in DC, because it allows for a central bank to be used to bankroll government involvement in the economy. It's crap, and it needs to be replaced with a system that prevents government intrusions (like you describe above). That system is gold-backed money [which prevents printing dollars and growing government], with the elimination of fractional reserve banking [which exacerbates the business cycle, creating boom-bust swings].
True. Also, I'm sure there was a lot of debate for them to decide whether to add that stuff and push the price over $100. I would expect, if they get enough interest, they will offer such an item next year (1GB RAM, 2-3 USB, maybe wifi), and could do it for the same price.
The difference with this thing is that it's got an easy to use dev kit based on a popular Linux distro, not some goofy one-off that doesn't have the packages you want (i.e. LAMP, media server, SAMBA, CUPS, etc.).
I'm not an MS fanboy... but using MS dev tools, writing software to work on MS operating systems, and with a user audience where MS software has a nearly-100% market share by choice... is my day job.
Right...so you don't need to know about anything else, even if there are reasonable alternatives.
As such, I don't have the luxury of time either in or out of my regular work hours to explore other things. I'm busy enough keeping up with current trends on the .NET Framework, which is exactly what the folks who fund my living want and need me to do.
A valid point, and perhaps a trap?
End of story.
Also, a dead end to your career. Trying something totally new is hard and painful, but opens a lot more doors. Adult life doesn't offer us the time we had to "tinker" like when we were kids, but missing it means you become a (Linux|MS|Java|Perl|PHP) zombie. Better to force yourself to learn something totally new, than to become older and unemployable at any interesting job, because "it was too much work" to try something new.
I'll remind my wife to try to keep her laptop's airflow ports unobstructed...
Oh, wait, the Constitution is routinely ignored by the Federal Government. So I'm sure a non-binding technology bill of rights will have a huge impact on limiting the Federal Government's actions...
Also in PA, doctors are leaving in droves or retiring because of a disastrous malpractice insurance system...
I never anticipated the death-by-a-thousand-papercuts mode of inoperation I would experience when moving from a linux to an MS shop. Really, you can't even legally run the OS on a VM without appropriate licensing. When you run commercial/proprietary, you run costly.
Am I the only person in the world who's more concerned about the 4,000 gallons of water that can be poisoned by a CFL in a landfill than I am about a possible slight improvement in carbon output?
However, if you go for the advanced degree route, be prepared to compete with the best people in the world in your specialty, and understand that if you can't come up with original, meaningful, material work, you'll have your bozo bit flipped and be let go rather quickly.
Alternatively, learn the engineering side of things (quality assurance, project leadership, etc.), and with a bachelor's or less, you can make decent money and be in demand as a senior engineer/line manager.
Basically, the educator curriculum in teaching colleges is designed around a ton of busywork related to pedagogy and doctrine; it is difficult for a creative person to put up with it. A few do, and graduate, and try really hard for a few years.
Inevitably in all but the best schools a passionate young teacher comes up against political battles (things like trying to fail a student who didn't try/show up/hand in any work) and/or the soul-crushing problem of managing a classroom with just one or two uncivilized savages whose parents are crack-addicted and incarcerated, and the overwhelming frustration of trying to teach 14 or 19 or 24 good kids with one or two real problem students overwhelms them. In what can be described as "working class" neighborhoods, there are a lot of 'parents' who don't get their kids to school, despite ridiculous levels of support, encouragement, special treatment, social workers, etc...
Paying more won't help. The teachers (probably about half to 2/3) eventually tune out or quit. Bless those saints who stay strong year after year.
The thing is, pay increases don't help. As John Taylor Gatto noted, the system is designed to destroy the family. Well it's succeeded at that, and now there is nothing to be done in some of these classrooms, no matter how good or devoted the teacher.
What it is coming down to, even for many of the selfless people in the helping professions, is an emerging clarity that giving something of enormous value (education) to people who refuse to participate, is a pointless, desperate, and demoralizing exercise.
Disagree. I could run Ubuntu 8.10 and XP equally well on my old Pentium II 400MHz/512Mb laptop. Gnome without effects is about as responsive as XP without desktop effects.
You're partially correct. Telecom providers make money by investing in capital equipment (the fiber, copper, routers, switches, etc.), then extracting revenue from that equipment over the long term. This is fine, and purely capitalist. The anti-capitalist part is when they lobby for laws preventing others from entering the marketplace, or lobby for special privileges for domain rights, etc., and shoulder out of the way the smaller operator who can't lobby/legislate as well. The government involvement is the part that makes it anti-capitalist (including Intellectual Property law).
I've worked with good PMs who still were late or over budget most of the time. I think the statistic that 80% of all software projects are at least 100% over budget or time is still true. That means my original assertion that "most" fail compared to the original charter is basically true (if a bit blunt).
Jawn is right, but remember that You Will Fail. Accept that. Experienced project managers fail most of the time. When I say fail, I mean you will be late and over budget. "Managing" expectations is what the learning experience is about your first time around. Good luck.
Actually, FDR had wheat plowed under rather than harvested even while people starved in the street, just to keep up the prices to support the farming industry which was overproducing. Read history before blaming the free market. All of this has been allowed to happen because of the central banks, which are basically the government's cash machine. And now the same thing that caused the problem (interventionist policy) is being touted as the cure, by Democrats and Republicans...
Sun has a great line of recurring business selling hardware and support to telecom companies (AT&T, T-MO). Not game-changing, but I'm sure this is not the only niche market where Sun is still beating Linux.
In my geographical region (Philadelphia PA, USA) degreed nurses make as much as degreed senior developers (more when they work overtime). Teachers make almost as much as mid-level web developers depending on experience, and have 3 months off per year, and almost perfect job security (you literally have to get caught having sex with a student to get fired). Both jobs have crappy aspects, too -- I'm not dinging them, just pointing out that the pay is reasonable.
I disagree. I see this a lot. It is true of many bright (not exceptional) engineers I've worked with that get these kinds of comments, that they distinguish themselves with PERSEVERANCE. I've noticed that even many engineers in their 40s and 50s are losing this trait. Banging your head on the wall and feeling the hurt until you get the answer is hard, and it sucks when others write it off as "being so smart".
1) When the pending performance issue can be solved for the next year's worth of growth with an affordable amount of hardware, buy hardware.
2) If the system is only deployed in one place (not a problem multiplied across 10s, 100s, or 1000s of sites)
3) When the hardware to be purchased is NOT expensive legacy hardware that makes it more expensive to fix the right way later (or makes finance think you don't know what you're doing saying you can replace a $1M AIX machine w/ $40K in commodity hardware, leaving them with a huge capital cost to depreciate).
4) When the marginal cost of hardware is less than the marginal cost of hiring a new programmer. This is true for most Sun machines and all x86.
I've been in the opposite of each of the above scenarios, when we used programming talent to solve the problems because the criteria above were actually the opposite.